Calvin

by Martine Leavitt

  It took a while to try on the boots, but otherwise everything went pretty quickly. We picked out food, water, a small tent, a flashlight, a compass, a tiny first-aid kit, and down sleeping bags. I could tell the clerk was impressed with my vast knowledge. He just nodded and stacked everything beside the cash register.

  Me: We still need backpacks, but they’re pricey.

  Susie: Maybe we should take a sled.

  Somehow that felt like it had fate all over it, the idea of a sled. It made the whole thing seem happier.

  Me: Yeah, a sled! One of those, please, and a duffel bag and a rope.

  Hobbes: I’d like a scarf. A red one.

  We bought the gear, excluding the red scarf, and put on the clothes in the changing rooms.

  Hobbes paced around the store, and I could hear him sniffing hungrily at anything that looked like food. When I tried to get a look at him from the changing room, he was behind a rack of fleeces. When I came out of the changing room, he was lurking behind a display of cast-iron pots. Soon he was behind me again.

  Hobbes: If you’re a tiger, everything you need is already attached to you. But a friend would have bought me a red scarf.

  * * *

  When we left the store, I kept waiting for Susie to say just kidding or to disappear. Instead she helped me load up the trunk of the cab.

  Me: You’re not seriously coming.

  Susie: You just bought me all this stuff.

  Me: You can return it! Listen, you have to be the one who tells my mom that I’m at the bottom of the lake if I don’t come home.

  She got into the cab, and Hobbes and I got in, too, and I slammed the door.

  Me: Point Pelee Park, please.

  Cabdriver: Sorry?

  Me: Point Pelee. Point Pelee.

  Cabdriver: Okay.

  He pulled away.

  Me: Susie, please don’t do this.

  Susie: I won’t if you won’t.

  She said it kind of sad, kind of scared, which made me feel sad and scared, which then made me mad.

  Me: Look, I’m doing this. I didn’t ask your opinion, and I don’t want you to come. Why are you even here with me?

  Susie: Because you need me.

  Me: No, I don’t.

  Susie: I’m going to make sure you live and go back to school and become a neuroscientist and have a good life.

  Me: Why are you talking like you care?

  She appeared to consider this as if it were an honest question instead of a snide remark.

  Me: You always thought I was weird. Last year you ditched me as a friend.

  Susie: Yeah. You’ve always been weird. You’re even weirder now.

  Hobbes: You have to give her credit—she’s always been smart.

  Susie: You need to go back to school and face up to things. You need medication—

  Me: Yeah—easy for you to say. You don’t know what happens to a guy on some of those meds. Can I tell you?

  Susie: No. We don’t have that kind of relationship. Listen, if you go back to school, I promise I’ll stand by you. So now can we just forget this whole impressing–Bill Watterson thing?

  Me: Susie, I have to do this.

  Susie: You really think Bill’s going to be waiting onshore when you get to the other side of the lake?

  Me: Yeah.

  Susie:

  Me: Well, maybe.

  Susie: Don’t be sad if he doesn’t show up.

  Me: I won’t.

  Susie:

  Me: Okay, yes, I will.

  Susie: I know.

  * * *

  We rode in silence the rest of the way. I sat close to Susie, crowded out by Hobbes. I kept looking at her, expecting she would vanish any second, but she was a persistent delusion if she was one.

  Hobbes: I think she likes you. I can teach you how to smooch. I’ve had lots of practice.

  Me: Move over.

  Hobbes: Smooching is a way of tasting people without actually eating them up.

  Me: Don’t talk to me.

  Cabdriver: Strange day to go to the lake.

  Me: Yup.

  Cabdriver: You sure are loaded up there.

  Me: Yup.

  Cabdriver: Pretty cold out there today.

  Me: Sure is.

  You could always tell when you were getting close to the lake. The lake opened up the sky. You could see the lake’s sky before you saw the lake.

  The driver was quiet for the rest of the way until we pulled into the park. We got out of the cab and the driver helped unload our stuff.

  It cost $12.10 for park fees, and a flat rate of $40 for the cab.

  Cabdriver: So, uh, you want me to come back for you later?

  Me: Nope.

  Cabdriver:

  He looked from me to the sled to the lake and back to me.

  Cabdriver: You’re not—

  Me: Yup.

  The cabdriver stared at me a second.

  Cabdriver: You’re crazy if you’re thinking of walking across that lake.

  Me: Yes.

  Cabdriver: Do your parents know?

  Me: Hopefully this tip will buy your silence.

  I held out the money and he snatched it.

  Cabdriver: In my day kids killed themselves with heroin.

  He jumped back into the cab and drove away fast.

  Me: You meet all kinds when you’re a cabdriver.

  Hobbes: You should have tipped him more.

  * * *

  At first, Bill, I’d thought of heading south by southwest, passing Pelee Island along the way, maybe Kelleys Island, and ending up at Sandusky. We’d have Cedar Point to rely on if we ran into trouble. That was the shortest way, but I wasn’t sure I should trouble you to drive all the way to Sandusky. That’s why I decided to head south and southeast to end up at Cleveland in sight of the downtown towers, where you were supposed to meet us in two days in time for breakfast. That would be eighty-seven kilometers. The natural human walking gait is five kilometers an hour, which meant it could be walked in just over seventeen hours. Theoretically.

  It sounded so feasible at the time, Bill. And you’d be there holding on to a new Calvin comic with no Hobbes in it that proved all the bad stuff that had happened to me was just for a laugh and tomorrow would be a whole new three-frame adventure.

  That was the plan.

  Too bad it didn’t work out that way.

  While we ate lunch we looked out over the lake. The wind had blown the forming ice into sharp, angled ridges and chunks between the shore and the open ice.

  The snow was white, the sky was white, the sun was white. Susie’s face was white.

  Me: It’s 12:20. If we walk five kilometers an hour for the next six hours, we’ll be in good shape to make it to the United States by breakfast the day after tomorrow.

  Susie (in a small voice): Bill doesn’t even know you’re doing this.

  Me: Yes, he does. I e-mailed him in care of his publisher, and they will have forwarded my letter to him. And I also sent a letter to the editor at The Plain Dealer. If the paper published it in their letters section or turned it into an article for the front page, Bill will read all about it.

  Susie: Maybe he’s drawing the comic right now so you won’t have to do this.

  Me: Bill didn’t save Calvin from much. He let Hobbes tackle him every day after school.

  Hobbes: He let him ride in his wagon with me on the back.

  Me: He let him sled down that steep hill with Hobbes in the winter.

  Hobbes: He let him jump out of his bedroom window on the second floor and let him get attacked by his food.

  Me: He left Calvin alone with a tiger.

  Susie: Yeah, I guess Bill isn’t going to suddenly pop up and say, Hey, don’t do it.

  She turned to me.

  Susie: He’s not going to save you. I’m going to save you by telling you this is the craziest idea ever, and it just proves you’re sick.

  Me: It’s a creative idea. I’m creative. The doctor says lots of crea
tive geniuses have this problem. I read somewhere that John Lennon saw God in his living room.

  Susie: Well, that was John Lennon, so it probably really was God.

  Me: True.

  I looked out at the lake again, and now I could see all the different colors of white in it. Blue-ice white, and lavender-white in the shadows of the drifts, and every kind of white ever invented. I looked at Susie and she looked back at me.

  She couldn’t be real. Nobody could be that pretty.

  I looked up at the sky.

  Me: Okay, universe, this is your chance to stop me. Send me a sign and I won’t do it.

  Universe:

  I stood there and, Bill, I felt powerful somehow, like I was in control of me again. It was like the lake was invented for just this moment, and for me to walk across it. I packed our things in the duffel bag and roped it and the tent onto the sled.

  Susie: I’m scared.

  Me: It’s beautiful.

  Susie: It’s empty.

  I stepped onto the ice.

  I didn’t want her to come.

  But I did.

  I picked up the sled handle and looked back. Susie was staring down at her feet as if wondering why they weren’t moving.

  Me: Susie, meet me on the other side. How’s that? Talk to Bill in case I’m a bit late.

  Susie: You’ll never make it without me. Do you know why you have to store your bottled water upside down?

  Me: Why?

  Susie: Because water in the bottle freezes from the top down. If it freezes up a bit, we’ll still be able to drink some.

  I didn’t tell her I already knew that.

  Susie: You need me.

  I left it at that, Bill. I knew she would come. I guess I thought I could take care of her. That’s how crazy I was.

  I turned back to the lake.

  Susie came to my left side, Hobbes to his spot just behind and to my right.

  Me (to Susie): Okay. If we die, we die together.

  Susie: You die first.

  Hobbes: I’m already dead. Washed to death.

  Me: Yukon ho!

  We had begun.

  * * *

  The wind only whines and whistles and wails when it’s trying to get into the cracks of windows and doors. It only thumps and bellows when it bumps up against trees and houses and cars. But on a big flat empty lake, it’s just a force. It’s a big soft hand that pushes and presses at you, silent, steady. Soon you realize the wind isn’t flowing around you, over you, it’s flowing through you, penetrating the electromagnetic field that gives you the illusion of being a solid entity, whipping straight through you, spinning your atoms like tops and leaving them dizzy and frosty and deeply impressed.

  Me: Calvin likes snow.

  Susie: Then you should be super-happy because I’ve never seen so much snow.

  Me (pointing): All we have to do is head that way and we end up at Cleveland.

  Susie: Bill Watterson would hate you to be doing this. He would call it a flare-up of weirdness. He would think you’re trying to keep him from moving on in his life by wanting him to do another Calvin cartoon.

  Me: I just want one. One comic, Calvin, aged seventeen, being of sound mind. Besides, what do you know about Bill Watterson?

  Susie: As much as you!

  Me: Nobody knows Calvin like I do.

  Susie: How can you say that?

  Me: Okay, when was Bill born?

  Susie: July 5, 1958.

  Me: Wha—? How—?

  Susie: Is that the best you can do?

  Me: What’s his brother’s name?

  Susie: Thomas. Father, James. Mother, Kathryn. Wife, Melissa. Cat, Sprite, who has passed on.

  Me: What did he almost call Calvin?

  Susie: Marvin.

  Me:

  Susie (grinning):

  Me: I told you all that stuff.

  Even though I had no memory of telling her.

  Susie: Yes, you did. And I remembered.

  I couldn’t believe the real Susie would remember all that about you, Bill. I didn’t tell her I now had proof she was a delusion. I guess I thought a delusion was better than nobody at all.

  * * *

  We walked a long time, taking turns pulling the sled, keeping an eye on the compass. At least it felt like a long time, but when I checked my watch it had only been half an hour. I promised I wouldn’t look at my watch again until an hour had passed.

  White, white, flat, flat, white, white, flat, flat. My boots said it to me over and over. I felt like I was walking and not moving—the horizon the same, the snow the same, my boots sounded the same, white, white, flat, flat, white flat, white flat. Susie hiked with this glum look on her face, stomping like she was mad at the lake, like she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  I checked my watch again. Twenty more minutes had passed.

  Twenty?

  My lungs were going into shock. They weren’t used to such clean air. Where were the exhaust fumes, the spewings of factories and furnaces? the burning of fossil fuels? the crop-dusting, the insect killers, the fertilizer dust? This was Precambrian air.

  I started to forget about my watch, about everything—noise and color and warmth and who I was and why I was there. Then Susie would sigh or say argh when we had to climb a snow dune, and I would remember that I was Calvin, the schizophrenic kid, the kid who was going to flunk twelfth grade because he didn’t do his English and science projects, the kid who didn’t tell his perfectly decent parents that he was going to walk across a lake and they would for sure know by now their son was missing from the hospital.

  * * *

  We talked to pass the time. Or at least I talked. About important stuff.

  Me: What would it be like to be a bottom-dwelling fish?

  Susie: Why do you ask questions like that?

  Me: I mean, you would spend your whole existence in the cold and dark. Born in the cold and dark and always in the cold and dark, and when you died, it couldn’t get any colder or darker than that, so you wouldn’t even know that you had died—

  Susie: Bonus.

  Me: Did you know that you’re probably the only one at school who wouldn’t be freaked out by me, a person with schizophrenia?

  Susie: That’s not true. I am freaked out by you.

  Me: I know why. I remind you that reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game.

  Susie: What makes you think you know what people think?

  Me: Because brains are amazing. They can guess about each other. Think about it, Susie. The brain is the only part of your body that knows it exists. Huh? Huh? It knows! Your hand, it does what your brain tells it to. Your stomach, your lungs, your heart—your brain doesn’t even ask your permission. It says, don’t trouble yourself about breathing and digestion and blood and whatnot. Let me take caaaare of it for you … C’mon, what is scarier than that? The brain is a monster! Your feet don’t know they exist. Your pancreas doesn’t. They just do their good ol’ job and die when the brain tells them to. But the brain, it says, try and figure me out, but you can only know as much as I’ll tell you. Are you following me, Susie? The brain can ask bigger questions than you can answer.

  Susie:

  Me: Well?

  Susie: I think I lost you back there somewhere.

  Me: I see a town.

  Susie: Of course there is no town out in the middle of the lake. You’re hallucinating.

  Me: You’re right. Sorry.

  Susie: There’s a town in the middle of the lake!

  * * *

  Turns out it was an ice-fishing village, Bill. Just a bunch of little boxy shanties sitti
ng on the ice—a few the size of big porta-potties, some as big as Dumpsters, a couple the size of sheds. One was painted up to look like a doghouse. One was painted with palm trees and flowers and a hula dancer. The village came complete with a chapel shanty and a theater shanty, and between all the shanties were little roads made of snowmobile tracks.

  It was cool, like the lake had surprises.

  A man came out of one shanty and stopped to look at us. He was carrying a fishing pole. He was six and a half feet, probably close to three hundred pounds.

  Hobbes: I’m hungry.

  Me: Catching anything?

  Fisherman (suspicious): Just a cold.

  Me: Interesting place.

  Fisherman: ’Tis. Quiet. Nobody minds your business. Fishin’?

  Me: No.

  Fisherman: Whatcha doin’ out here if it isn’t fishin’?

  Me: We’re hiking across.

  Fisherman: You’re hiking across the lake? You’re nuts.

  Me: That’s the point.

  Fisherman (stroking his beard): What are your names?

  Me: Calvin and Susie.

  Hobbes: And Hobbes.

  The fisherman stopped stroking his beard.

  Fisherman: Calvin and Susie, huh.

  He said our names like he didn’t believe us.

  Fisherman: No way should you be doing this.

  Me: I have to.

  Susie: He has to.

  Me: She doesn’t have to. Can you give her a ride back to shore?

  Susie: He doesn’t tell me what to do.

  Fisherman: Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to contact the authorities.

  Me: Cell phones don’t work out here.

  Fisherman: I have a ham radio.

  Me: Please. We’re on a trek to prove our devotion to the creator—

  Fisherman: Creator? Are you some kind of religious nut?

  Me: The creator of Calvin and Hobbes.

  Fisherman:

  Me: Well, we’ll be going now.

  Fisherman: You’re doing this for … for Bill Watterson?

  Me: Yes.

  Susie: We’re doing this to raise awareness for schizophrenia.

  Me: We’re doing this to show how much we want Mr. Watterson to draw one more Calvin comic. He might even be waiting for us on the other side of the lake.

  Fisherman: I love him. I have every book.

  Me: Yeah. Me, too.